Jun
09
2010
Maps, Maps, and More Maps
I love maps. Always have. When I was in elementary school I asked for atlases for my birthday (don’t laugh). I even started making my own atlas, which was basically just tracing the states from other atlases and copying their information. Today I still love maps–city street guides, laminated posters, road atlases, historical atlases, pretty much anything with a map.
If you are looking for a good book of Bible maps I recommend The New Moody Atlas of the Bible (2009). The ESV Study Bible is great if you need something on the spot, but sometimes you want something more in depth. For years I’ve used Baker’s Atlas of the Bible and Christianity. It is easy to use, colorful, and the last half of the book on church history is especially fascinating. But the number of maps related to the Bible is not as large as it could be, and there is very little explanation to the maps themselves.
The New Moody Atlas is a different kind of book. Barry Beitzel, professor of Old Testament and Semitic Languages at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, has given us a superb reference work. This over-sized book is 300 pages and contains 118 maps. But there is also lots of text. This is a scholarly work which aims to unpack the important role geography has played in biblical history.
But don’t be intimated by an atlas with more words than pictures. There is a useful table of contents and list of maps at the front to guide you and several indexes at the end (in unfortunate squint print) to help you find what you’re looking for.
I’ve been using The New Moody Atlas of the Bible since I got it last year and I really like it. Every pastor needs a good atlas on his shelf. Most Christians could benefit from one too. This is certainly one of the best.